


into oblivion

by luxluminaire



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Mind Control, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 10:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12703014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxluminaire/pseuds/luxluminaire
Summary: After Command's arrival to the Hephaestus, Minkowski undergoes an interrogation and learns just how far Cutter and Pryce are willing to go to obtain the information that they need. Hours later, Lovelace finds out that despite her resistance to Pryce's mind-control devices, Cutter still has a means of tormenting her.(A pair of missing scenes set during and after "A Place For Everything.")





	into oblivion

It seems like a cosmic joke that unmitigated disaster strikes within the first twenty-four hours of Minkowski re-taking command of the Hephaestus, with Eiffel’s descent into the gravitational pull of Wolf 359 and the arrival of a spacecraft containing the highest of the high authorities in Goddard Futuristics. By this point, Minkowski has accepted that “cosmic joke” is the best description for at least half of the things that have happened during the three years that she has spent in deep space. She’s not one for jokes, not like Lovelace is, but even she can recognize that everything from the last few months has been building up to the unexpected punchline of Mr. Cutter passing through the airlock to enter the Hephaestus.

Minkowski barely has time to process what happens next before she is being escorted out of the docking bay and onto the Sol. As cheerful as Cutter has been during their preliminary encounter, she does not trust him for one second when he says that he wants to “chat” with her. Disaster has surrounded every prior communication with Cutter from the Hephaestus, and that’s _with_ the vacuum of nearly eight light years of space separating them. Seeing him face-to-face, and knowing that he has taken the time and resources to come here himself, brings a knot of foreboding to the pit of her stomach. So do the blank eyes of her escorts, Bernoulli and Jordan, the two women who had once been the commander and the communications officer of the U.S.S. Hermes but have now been reduced to mindless husks. Minkowski does not want to think too hard about _that_ part of the current circumstances.

The first thing that she notices about the Sol is that its interior simulates Earth gravity. After spending so long in a zero-gravity environment, with only magnetic gear and restraints to keep her on solid ground when necessary, she is unsteady on her feet as she walks through the corridor. The design of the spacecraft more closely resemble the Urania than the Hephaestus, with the sleek, streamlined appearance of a top-of-the-line craft for which no expense was spared. It’s a stark contrast to the “haphazardly cobbled together from previous deep-space missions” approach to most of the Hephaestus’s structure.

Her escorts bring her to what can only be described as a waiting room: clean white walls, a couch, and even a few fake potted plants. Minkowski almost laughs at the detail, only because of how absurd it is to furnish a space shuttle with fake plants. Then again, that _is_ the exact type of decorating choice that Cutter would make, and she is in his territory now. Her escorts do not say anything to her, but she sits down on the couch regardless. She focuses upon the long leaves of the fake palm plant next to her, if only to give her a distraction from her overwhelming sense of dread. She is sure that making her wait is all part of Cutter’s game: wearing her down psychologically first and then striking when she is vulnerable.

She loses track of how much time passes before she hears approaching footsteps. When she sees Cutter she rises to her feet in an automatic motion, not quite the standing at attention that she would give to a superior officer but still a gesture of respect. She does not have much reason to respect Cutter anymore, of course, but discipline is not something easily unlearned.

“Thank you for waiting so patiently,” Cutter says. “I wish we could have gotten right to business, but, you know, lots of important things to take care of first.” He laughs. “Let’s get started, shall we? Follow me.”

He leads her through a door into a room that resembles a small personal office. Rather than directing her toward his desk, Cutter steers her to a long table on the other side of the room. Even on a spacecraft he has not shed his corporate pretense, and as they settle themselves down at opposite ends of the table Minkowski feels like she has entered into a staff meeting where no one else has dared to show up.

“Well, Renée,” Cutter begins. “It’s certainly been a _long_ time since we’ve had the chance to talk. How long has it been now? Almost a year and a half? How time flies when you get busy. And it sounds like you’ve been _very_ busy up here.”

“Yes, sir,” Minkowski replies stiffly. She sits up straight in her chair, conscious not to shift or fidget to reveal the full extent of her nervousness.

“Of course, I had my reports from Warren to keep me updated for a while,” says Cutter. “But there are some frankly alarming gaps that need to be filled in about what’s happened since the last time he and I talked. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

“What do you want to know, sir?” she asks. Her automatic instinct to comply with the strict regulations of military discipline counters her desire to spit out a response of _I’m not telling you anything_. As much as she has come to distrust many of her instincts recently, she knows that responding aggressively to him will lead her nowhere good.

“Hmm.” Cutter interlaces his fingers, resting his hands on the surface of the table as he leans forward in his chair. “Let’s start with why there are only five of you here. Last time I checked in with Warren, there were eight crew members on the Hephaestus and he was the commanding officer. But now you’re the one in charge and you’re down three people. That’s not good, Renée. Not good at all.”

An old memory surfaces of the warning that Minkowski had received the first time she met Cutter: _Don’t lie. He’ll know. Nobody knows how, but he always knows._ Revealing the truth of what has happened is out of the question, however. Between the deaths, the alien contact, and the new mountains of interpersonal conflict, the truth provides Cutter with very little good news. With his intentions still unknown, she cannot risk him finding out anything that will give him a reason to kill her and the rest of the crew. Her best approach will have to be keeping her information vague enough to give him a satisfying answer while concealing the finer details. “Tactically misrepresenting available data,” as Hera would call it.

“About four months ago, we had… a bit of an incident,” Minkowski says, speaking carefully to avoid provocative words like “mutiny” and “murder.” “Unfortunately, both Dr. Hilbert and Dr. Maxwell were killed in the resulting fallout, and it was decided that the most prudent course of action would be for Colonel Kepler to step down from his command position.”

“I see.” Cutter shows his teeth in a smile that does nothing to reassure Minkowski. She maintains her eye contact with him no matter how unnerved she feels. “Surely there must be more to it than that. You didn’t mention anything about Doug, for one.”

“I’m, um…” Minkowski clears her throat in a quiet sound. Her hands clench against the arms of the chair. “I’m sorry, sir?”

“You explained the absences of Alexander and Alana--truly tragic losses, by the way, they were both such brilliant minds--but you didn’t say anything about Doug. Communications officers don’t just disappear into thin air, you know.” Cutter laughs. “You’ve already lost him once. To lose one of your essential crew members for a second time--well, that’s just careless.”

“We didn’t _lose_ him, we just--” Minkowski breaks off with a huff of breath before her irritation at being called careless drives her to accidentally reveal too much.

“Oh?” Cutter raises his eyebrows. “Go on. Don’t stop before you get to the good part.”

Minkowski does not reply. She averts her gaze downward, studying the surface of the table in a moment of uncertainty before meeting Cutter’s eyes again. He continues to stare at her unblinkingly, his mouth still set in that unnerving smile.

“Come on, Renée,” he says. “We don’t have all day. I’ll give you one more chance. Tell me everything about what’s been happening here, or I’m going to have to find other ways to get the information. More _creative_ ways.”

The pounding of Minkowski’s heart echoes in her ears. Everyone ounce of her training tells her that she should comply with his order, continuing with Kepler’s plan of unconditional surrender to whatever terms Cutter lays out. Stubbornness has always been one of her worst qualities, however, and so she remains silent despite his threat. Lovelace would be proud of her, she thinks idly. Of course, if Lovelace were in this situation she’d respond with a finely-aimed scathing remark rather than silence, but Minkowski doubts that she herself could ever reach that level of boldness with Cutter.

“Well.” Cutter’s voice loses its cheerful tone, growing dangerously soft. A chill crawls beneath Minkowski’s skin at the change in his voice. “That was your last chance to do things the easy way, Renée. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He activates a communications device on his wrist, which rests below the cuff of his suit jacket that seems impractical in the current environment. “Rachel,” he says into the device, his voice returning to its usual aggressively upbeat register, “could you tell Miranda to finish up her work on Hera and join me on the Sol?” Minkowski does not hear a response, which puzzles her until she notices the small earpiece that he wears. “Super. And keep an eye on Warren, will you? Make sure he doesn’t do anything… _rash_.”

Cutter returns his attention to Minkowski. “I think you’ll find,” he continues on, “that my associate is far less patient than I am when it comes to getting information. One way or another, she’ll find out what we want to know. And she’ll do it with or without your cooperation.”

Minkowski’s heart continues to hammer in her chest, but she swallows her fear and meets Cutter’s eyes. “What have you done to Hera?” she demands.

“Oh, there’s no need to worry,” he assures her. “Your AI friend will be perfectly fine. Although…” He chuckles softly. “You were never introduced to my counterpart, were you? Dr. Pryce and Hera are _very_ well-acquainted with each other. You can almost say that she’s like a mother to her. She just wants to make sure that Hera’s behaving herself.”

His words do not inspire much confidence in her. She remembers how Hera’s programming had been overridden remotely when the Sol had begun its approach, and that detail had been what sent Kepler into unprecedented panic. She now has very little doubt that this Dr. Pryce is the person responsible for that development. The thought of someone having that level of control over Hera, to a degree which not even Maxwell had achieved, does not bode well.

“Wait,” Minkowski murmurs to herself. “Dr. Miranda Pryce…” A dawning sense of horror comes over her. “No. It can’t be.”

Cutter regards her with amusement, as if he has been waiting for her to come to this conclusion. As much as Minkowski does not want to believe it, it cannot be a coincidence that the woman who has recently arrived on the Hephaestus has the same name as one of the authors of Pryce and Carter’s Deep Space Survival Procedure and Protocol Manual. But someone so closely affiliated with Cutter _can’t_ have co-written the text to which Minkowski has clung to like a lifeline to help her through everything that this mission has thrown at her. The implications are too much for her to bear.

“She--she can’t be the same Pryce as in ‘Pryce and Carter,’ can she?” she asks Cutter, unsure if she wants to know the answer.

Cutter laughs. “You know, I was _waiting_ for you to figure that one out. It’s always so hard to stay quiet in the presence of a fan. I have to say, your devotion to that silly little guide we wrote all those years ago is very much appreciated. If a little alarming, sometimes.”

“We?” Minkowski repeats before the meaning of his words sinks in. The horror within her grows at the realization. Who else would be relentlessly cheery yet undeniably unnerving enough to write some of the more esoteric survival tips contained in the guide? “Oh, God. Does that mean you’re--”

“W.S. Carter?” Cutter finishes for her. He spreads his arms out wide. “Yes, you’re looking at him. Or, well, in a manner of speaking. You’ll find that I need to, hmm, _reinvent_ myself every now and then. Carter’s just one of the many hats I’ve worn. But we’re getting way too far ahead of ourselves here.” He laughs again. “Oh, come _on_ , Renée. Don’t look so scandalized. How long have you spent living by that book? You should feel honored to finally be in the presence of its authors.”

The only thing Minkowski feels, however, is a burning desire to take her copy of the D.S.S.P.P.M. from her quarters, toss it out the airlock, and purge all memory of it from her mind. To think that she has spent so long abiding by, even _respecting_ , the survival manual that was at least partially written by the same man who left her and her crew to die in space--she cannot bear the thought. There’s a reason why the phrase “never meet your heroes” exists, and now Minkowski is experiencing the sting of the broken pedestal of the people she’d built Pryce and Carter up to be in her head. Whatever she has expected them to be, it is certainly not _this_.

The door opens behind her. A woman strides into the room, and the heels of her shoes click against the floor with a sound that Minkowski has almost forgotten in the years that she has spent in space. At first the most notable aspect of Pryce’s appearance is that she, like Cutter, looks far too young to have written a deep space survival manual well over thirty years ago. Minkowski then notices how the movements of her eyes seem more robotic than human. Her eyelids blink over the unnaturally blue irises that glow with the tiny conduits of tech implants. Minkowski has heard rumors about the cutting-edge biosynthetic body modifications that Goddard Futuristics has developed, but this is the first time that she has seen any of them in action. The sight unsettles her with the uncanniness that comes from something that is just _slightly_ out of the ordinary.

“How did things go at the AI central processor?” Cutter asks. “Did you get Hera under control?”

“I don’t think it will give us any more problems,” replies Pryce. “Have you had any success in here?”

The way that she refers to Hera as “it” stirs up a fresh wave of anger inside Minkowski, because she will be damned if she lets anyone speak about a member of her crew in such a dehumanizing manner. What disturbs her even more, however, is that Pryce’s voice sounds _exactly_ like Hera’s. Her tone is less friendly and polite, and it lacks Hera’s usual distortions and glitches, but there is no mistaking it as hers. Before Minkowski can ponder the implications of that particular detail, Cutter’s voice pulls her back to the present moment

“Renée’s being difficult.” He gives a sigh of exasperation as if he is talking about an obstinate child--which Minkowski had been, once upon a time, before she had grown into an equally obstinate adult. “She’s not feeling particularly chatty today.”

“Is that so?” Unlike Cutter, Pryce’s voice contains no trace of humor. “Ugh. I _told_ you that you were wasting your time with civility.” She regards Minkowski with an icy stare. “I’m sure your refusal to share the information that you have has been very cute, Lieutenant, but it won’t last. Soon you won’t have any choice but to cooperate with us.”

“And even if I _do_ cooperate,” Minkowski says, not that she has any intention of doing so. “What’s stopping you from killing me after you get what you want?” She has played this game before, after all, and she knows the value of important intel. She does not intend to give up any leverage that may be currently keeping her alive.

“Technically? Nothing.” Cutter laughs, as if he finds it amusing how quickly he is willing to have someone killed. “But killing you would be _such_ a waste. Why kill someone when you can find a new use for them instead?”

His words send a shiver down Minkowski’s spine. She does not allow herself to tremble and instead remains firm in her best presentation of stalwart determination. “What do you mean, ‘new use’?”

“Why don’t we show you?” says Cutter. “Miranda, if you please?”

Pryce crosses the width of the room and enters a code into the keypad on one of the office’s walls. The wall slides away to reveal another room that resembles a tech lab of sorts. In the middle of the new room sits a strange chair, as clinically unwelcoming as one found in a dentist’s office. An apparatus resembling a halo is attached to the headrest, and the loose bonds of restraints drape across the arms and seat of the chair.

“Bernoulli, Jordan, bring her to the chair,” Pryce orders.

They approach Minkowski from where they have been standing at the door as silent sentinels to the proceedings. They grab hold of her, forcing her to her feet and marching her into the other room. Minkowski’s first instinct is to break free of their hold and make a dash for the door while she has the gravity to run, but she cannot bring herself to do it. Between Cutter and Pryce, she suspects that they will find a way to stop her escape before she gets halfway out of the room.

“What--what is this?” she asks after Bernoulli and Jordan have roughly and unceremoniously pushed her into the chair.

“It’s a very _special_ chair,” Cutter explains, watching with interest as Pryce fastens the restraints into place. Minkowski struggles against the bonds that now confine her, earning her a tsk of disapproval from Pryce and a painful tightening of the restraints against her body. “One of my favorite inventions of Miranda’s, if I do say so myself.”

“It will create a complete map of your neural pathways and digitize the information into a computer system,” adds Pryce. Her unnatural eyes flick over to the computer hardware on the other side of the room. “Anything you’ve seen, thought, or experienced--”

“--it’s all fair game to us,” Cutter finishes for her. “So guess what, Renée? You don’t have to tell us anything. Like I said, we’ll find out what exactly you and your crew have been doing one way or another.”

“You can’t--” Minkowski begins, but her words fall away before she decides how that sentence ends.

“You’ll find, Lieutenant,” says Pryce, “that there is very little that we can’t do.”

She flips a switch on the chair, and it hums with the energy of a machine powering up. The cold metal of the halo presses against Minkowski’s skin as the chair’s mechanisms surge to life. Before she has time to brace herself, a splitting pain sears through her head, like someone has cracked open her skull and started pulling out pieces of her brain. A scream of agony tears its way out of her throat as her hands clench against the arms of the chair with a white-knuckled grip. She writhes against her restraints, but they hold her too tightly to allow her to tear herself free. Despite her continued cries of pain, Pryce and Cutter show no intention of stopping the process. Pryce in particular regards her similarly to how Hilbert used to look at an interesting sample in his lab, as if she is curious to see how far she can push Minkowski’s biology before she breaks.

The machine’s pulses that infiltrate her mind eventually relent, leaving her with a lingering ache. Her chest heaves with the exertion of her strained breaths. She has never expected a data-based intrusion into her brain to be so physically taxing on her body, and she feels a sudden wave of sympathy for Hera and every invasive alteration made to her systems.

“There,” Cutter says, as relentlessly cheerful as ever. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He turns to where Pryce now sits typing at a nearby console. “Miranda? Find anything interesting yet?”

“Mm.” Pryce does not look up from the screen. “In between the complete scores of several musicals, the entire text of that survival manual that we wrote, and some rather _explicit_ details about the various trysts that she’s had with Captain Lovelace, I think I can put together something we can work with.”

The mention of Lovelace’s name crawls under Minkowski’s skin with a creeping sense of irritation. She has spent so long maintaining a sense of privacy when it comes to her romantic and sexual exploits that it sickens her to think someone can so easily have access to her memories of every stolen moment between her and Lovelace. Her snarl of “That’s private” does not manage to leave her lips through her ragged breaths, and so her only response is silent and exhausted defiance.

“It appears,” Pryce continues, “that the crew received a message through Lovelace at the time of the class thirteen flare. And then after months of trying to figure out the meaning of the message, Eiffel detached himself from his tether while on spacewalk detail and fell into the gravitational pull of Wolf 359.”

“Well, well, well,” Cutter’s smile grows impossibly wider. “It looks like you were holding out on us, Renée. But it’s okay. You gave us what we wanted. Problem solved!” He looks over his shoulder at Pryce. “Make sure you save some of that information about Isabel. We might be able to find a use for it later.”

A spark of anger pushes its way through Minkowski’s pain and ignites into fury. “If you lay even one hand on her, I swear to God I’ll--”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Pryce scolds her. “Don’t get any ideas about threatening us, Lieutenant. It won’t end well for you.”

She steps away from the computer and approaches a cabinet of what looks like medical supplies. What kind of doctor _is_ she, Minkowski wonders? All evidence thus far points to her being a horrifying amalgamation of Maxwell’s technological proficiency and Hilbert’s biological expertise, as if the universe has decided to provide Minkowski with a new figure to fill the void left behind after their deaths. As for what Pryce is retrieving from the cabinet, Minkowski cannot yet determine, but her instincts tell her that it is nothing good.

“Will you let me go now?” Minkowski asks. She tries not to let her voice tremble in a tone of desperate pleading. She has to sound like she is _negotiating_ , like she is still in command even though she is no longer on the station that has so recently become her domain again. “You said that I gave you what you wanted.”

“Let you go?” Pryce gives a quiet laugh as she turns away from the cabinet. “You misunderstand the situation.”

“Remember what I said about finding a new use for you?” Cutter’s gleeful little giggle adds a different angle of sinisterness to the situation. “I think it’s time for you to find out what that means. No, don’t get up,” he adds as Minkowski struggles against her restraints in a futile effort. “You’re not going anywhere right now. You just get to sit back, relax, and do whatever we tell you.”

“Whatever you tell--” Minkowski breaks off at Pryce’s approach. She carries with her a syringe and a device that bears a terrifying resemblance to a drill. “Wait. What are you doing?”

“Shh.” Pryce’s voice grows dangerously soft in a parody of soothing reassurance. “Everything is going to be okay.”

She prepares the needle on the syringe. Its prick stings against Minkowski’s skin when she inserts it, followed by a feeling of numbness that spreads throughout her body. The edges of Minkowski’s consciousness grow fuzzy, leaving her only dimly aware of Pryce removing the chair’s halo from around her head and holding her steady as the drill-like device in her other hand whirrs to life. Fear closes around her despite her muddled state of mind, gripping her tightly and refusing to let go. She begs herself to wake up so that she can be freed from whatever horrible nightmare she has fallen into, but she does not wake. Instead, the only thing she can do is let her thoughts settle upon a collection of happier memories: the press of Lovelace’s lips against her own, the warmth of her skin under her fingertips, the comfort and security of falling asleep in her arms. She clings to each of these moments for as long as she can before they peel themselves away from her focus one by one.

_I’m sorry, Isabel,_ she thinks in an unspoken apology for being unable to escape whatever terrible fate Pryce and Cutter have in store for her. _I’m sorry._

Her thoughts fade into nothingness. By the time everything is over and Pryce has loosened the restraints that secure her to the chair, she is left with nothing but a quiet buzzing in her head and the whispering assurance of _Everything is going to be okay_ that sneaks its way through her mind until soon those words are the only ones that matter.

“How are you feeling, Renée?” Cutter asks her as she rises to her feet.

“I feel fine, sir,” Minkowski replies serenely. “I’ve never felt better in my life.”

“Good.” He reaches out and pats her cheek twice. “Time to put you to work.”

* * *

Lovelace has never been more thankful for her non-human existence than she is when her alien biology scrambles the functions of a god-awful contraption so similar to the one that Hilbert had found waiting for him in the hidden room in engineering months ago. She has previously encountered other surprising perks to the otherwise crushing existential angst that has plagued her over the past four months, but nothing is quite so satisfying as seeing the smug smirk fade from Cutter’s expression as Pryce gives him an exasperated “I told you so.” Of course, that last part doesn’t mean anything when Pryce seems to be the answer to the question “Who could possibly be worse than Cutter?”, but Lovelace will take whatever small triumphs she can get in a moment of crisis.

All of that vanishes, however, when Minkowski and Eiffel enter the room, their eyes blank and unfocused and their voices eerily calm when they unhesitatingly comply with Cutter’s orders to take her away. She does not need Pryce’s explanation about how she has brought them under her control with a behavioral restraining bolt to know that something has gone horribly wrong. Her life on the Hephaestus is already a surreal nightmare on the best of days, and now with mind control added to the mix her situation has crossed the line into a swirling hellscape of torment.

Minkowski and Eiffel march her out of the room, each of them with a seizing hold on her arms. They stare straight ahead, single-minded in their task as they lead her through the corridors of the Sol. Unlike the crew of the Hermes, they have been proven to be still capable of speech, but they do not offer any words to her. Lovelace therefore takes the opportunity to fill the void of conversation herself, unable to endure the silence.

“Okay, this has to be some kind of joke, right?” she says. “Please tell me you’re just pretending to be brainwashed and as soon as you take me far enough away you’re going to stage a kick-ass rescue attempt.” She already knows the answer to that question, however. No one could fake how their eyes tell her that their minds are no longer their own.

“We would never joke about something like this, Captain,” Eiffel replies, and that’s when she _knows_ it’s not truly him, because the real Eiffel would never pass up an opportunity to make a joke. “We don’t have time to joke around when we have so much work to do.”

“Everything is going to be okay,” adds Minkowski. “You’ll see.”

They bring her to a small room that appears surprisingly comfortable for a place that will most likely be her prison. The first thing that she notices is that the room contains an actual bed--nothing extravagant, but Lovelace cannot remember the last time she slept in a bed that wasn’t one of the cots in Hilbert’s lab that she has to be strapped into to keep herself in place. The rest of the room is well-furnished with a table and chairs, shelves of books, and a couple of cabinets. It’s certainly a step up from the observation deck that serves as the Hephaestus’s prison.

“Right,” Lovelace says after she has taken stock of her surroundings. “So let me guess, you two are going to keep an eye on me while those monsters over there--” She gestures vaguely in the direction from which she came. “--decide what to do with me.”

“Oh, they’re not monsters,” replies Minkowski. “Mr. Cutter and Dr. Pryce are very nice. You shouldn’t say such rude things about them.”

Lovelace scoffs. “Yeah, I’m sure you had a real blast with them while they were _scrambling your brains_.”

“You don’t understand, Captain,” Eiffel says. “It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s like all my problems have gone away. Nothing hurts anymore, and I know that everything is going to be okay.” A dazed smile crosses his face, as if he does not quite know why he is making that expression. He has never looked more unsettling to Lovelace in--well, _any_ of her lives.

She opens her mouth to retort but then closes it again. There is no reasoning with these zombified versions of Minkowski and Eiffel, no matter how much she wants to snap them back to their senses. Instead, she sits down in one of the chairs pulled up near the table and waits. The bed in the corner of the room calls out to her in her exhaustion, but her spite toward any comforts that Goddard Futuristics tries to offer her counteracts her desire to lie down on an actual mattress. It’s not like she will be able to sleep when she knows that Cutter and Pryce are probably figuring out the best way to take apart her alien body and get what they want from her.

Eventually, the door opens. Cutter enters the room, carrying with him a steaming mug of some kind of hot beverage. “How do you like your new accommodations, Isabel?” he asks her.

“It’s the best prison I’ve ever been in,” Lovelace replies, taking refuge in deadpan remarks if only to keep herself from launching herself across the room and killing him with her bare hands.

“Oh, but ‘prison’ is such an ugly word,” says Cutter. “Think of it as your new home for the time being.” He sits down across from her and pushes the mug across the table to her. “Here. I brought you a chai latte. Drink up.”

Lovelace regards the mug with skepticism. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No kidding here, I’m afraid.” The smile that accompanies Cutter’s words does not offer Lovelace any reassurance. “Come on. I had Daniel make it for you special. You look like you could use a little pick-me-up.”

Of _course_ he has Jacobi on his brainwashed team as well. If Jacobi’s mind were entirely his own, he would probably recoil at the idea of playing barista for Cutter. So much for his claim that his status as an SI-5 agent in good standing will save him from the horrors of “processing.”

“Listen,” Lovelace says, her jaw clenched in irritation. “I’ve had a _very_ long day. I was having a long day even _before_ you assholes showed up. But if you think that I’m going to accept whatever drink you had whipped up for me at your personal deep-space Starbucks, you’re a lot stupider than I thought you were.”

Cutter sighs. “Oh, well. It’s your loss.” He takes a sip from the mug. “Mmm. Delicious. Now, let’s get to business, shall we?”

“I’m not doing business with you,” Lovelace replies immediately. “You can save whatever little speech you have planned. I have absolutely no interest in cooperating with you. So you and Pryce can go fuck yourselves, thanks.”

“Whoa! No need for that kind of language.” The frown of disapproval that crosses Cutter’s lips vanishes as quickly as it comes. He clears his throat and allows his usual smile to return. “As I was saying. The good news is that I don’t need anything from you right now. We have a _very_ tight schedule to keep here, and we don’t need any unknown elements messing that up. So you get to just hang out in here for a while until we _do_ need you. And I think you’re going to have a lot of fun in the meantime.”

“Yeah, somehow I feel like you and I have very different definitions of fun,” says Lovelace. “Do I need to remind you of all the other ‘fun’ things that you’ve put me through? Like that team-building exercise from hell? Or, oh wait, how about when you left me and my crew up here to die? _That_ was a good time.”

“But you’re still alive, aren’t you? That has to count for something.” Cutter chuckles. Lovelace isn’t sure whether he realizes the irony in his statement, because that original version of herself who had first come to the Hephaestus _isn’t_ alive anymore. Her only remaining existence is this alien-created duplicate of herself, who often doubts whether she measures up to the original. “You’ll have to wait a little while for the fun and games to start, though. There are a lot of balls that need to get rolling right now, and Miranda is not a patient woman. So, since you don’t want the drink I brought you, I’ll leave you with another parting gift.”

He reaches into one of the pockets of his suit jacket and pulls out a round metal device that resembles a thick bracelet. Lovelace narrows her eyes in distrust at its simple form that is also clearly not an ordinary piece of decorative jewelry. Even if it were, it would make the gift no less insulting. Lovelace cannot even _remember_ the last time she wore a piece of jewelry that wasn’t the piercings she’d experimented with in her teens and early twenties.

“What the hell is that?” she asks.

“Give me your hand first.”

The potential consequences of refusing him outweigh her desire to not let his hands anywhere near her, and so with a sigh of concession she offers her right hand to him. The cold metal of the bracelet brushes against her skin as Cutter slides it over her hand to rest on her wrist. He tightens the bracelet around her wrist like a single handcuff, and she winces at the way it pinches against her skin with a dull pain that is _just_ noticeable enough to bother her.

“It’s a simple shock bracelet,” Cutter explains. “Miranda’s neurological devices may bounce right off you, but that doesn’t mean you’re immune to other preventative measures. This handy little device will give you a nice electric shock if you try anything naughty. Like overpowering or otherwise influencing whoever is keeping watch over you, for example.”

“So if I reached across this table and tried to strangle you with my bare hands…” says Lovelace.

Cutter laughs. “Oh, Isabel. You always _were_ so charming. By all means, you can test the limits of the device if you want. But you should know that you’ll be on the ground in pain before you can even lay a hand on me. So I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Great,” Lovelace replies, continuing to let the sarcasm seep into her voice. “Is that all for your torture today?”

“Yes, I think that covers everything for now.” Cutter does not object to her use of the word “torture,” which does not bode well. “We’ll see each other again very soon. And try to rest up while you have the chance. We have some busy days ahead of us.”

He rises from his chair. Lovelace expects him to take the mostly untouched mug with him, but he leaves it in its position on the table. She waits until he is too far away to hear her before muttering, “Yeah, can’t fucking wait for that.”

Cutter walks toward the door and sizes up the silent forms of Minkowski and Eiffel that stand on either side of it. “Doug, why don’t we head to the Hephaestus and see how things are going over there?” he suggests.

“That sounds like a great idea, sir,” Eiffel replies with a simpering, eager-to-please tone that does not suit him at all.

“And Renée…” Cutter pauses, likely more for effect than anything else. “Why don’t you stay here and keep Isabel company until I come back?”

“I would be delighted to, sir,” says Minkowski.

Lovelace wonders if there is a small part of her mind that is struggling against whatever has been put in or taken out of her head to turn her into this horrifying pod-person version of herself. The real Minkowski, the one whom she loves, would never follow Cutter’s orders with a dazed smile on her face. After she has so recently declared her intention to start making decisions for herself, not because external forces have pushed her into making a choice, it seems like a cruel joke that she is now directly under the control of someone else with no signs of resistance.

“Have fun, you two,” Cutter says. His grin tells Lovelace that he knows _exactly_ what he is doing by having Minkowski stay instead of Eiffel. She does not question how he has learned that Minkowski is an emotional weakness to her, at least to the extent that Lovelace allows herself to have emotional weaknesses. The only thing that matters is that he is not afraid to use that knowledge to torment her.

Cutter closes the door behind him, and its electronic locks bolt into place with his departure. Lovelace remains seated at the table, trying not to look at Minkowski and the vacant expression on her face. Her presence is like watching a trainwreck, however, and so despite her best efforts Lovelace finds herself unable to tear her eyes away from the empty shell that Minkowski has become.

“So this is how it’s going to be, huh?” she asks. “You’re not even going to say anything? You’re just going to stand there like a goddamn statue?”

Minkowski barely blinks. “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable, Captain Lovelace?”

“Yeah, how about you snap out of whatever the hell they did to you?” Lovelace suggests. “That would be really great.”

“But why would I do that?” Minkowski tilts her head to the side in serene confusion. “I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life. Because I know that everything is going to be okay.”

She has repeated that empty reassurance twice now, like a pullstring doll who can only say a certain number of set phrases. Is that all Minkowski is now, a plaything for Cutter and Pryce to parade around as she carries out their commands? A new toy for them to show off as proof of how advanced the technology of Goddard Futuristics has become? A sick, swirling sensation of anger and disgust settles itself in the pit of Lovelace’s stomach. Minkowski deserves _more_ than having everything that she has gone through end with her as someone else’s puppet. Lovelace refuses to sit back and let this series of events play out to their conclusion.

“No, it’s _not_ going to be okay.” Lovelace rises to her feet, standing firm in the still-unfamiliar presence of Earth-equivalent gravity even though she feels like she is free-falling. She takes a few steps closer to Minkowski. “Come on. This isn’t you. I _know_ you, and you don’t want to be doing any of this.”

Minkowski does not react to her approach. “You seem agitated,” she says. “Maybe you should do what Mr. Cutter suggested and rest. That sounds like a very nice idea to me.”

Lovelace growls out a noise of frustration. “Listen to me, Renée.” When she uses Minkowski’s first name, she does not utter it out of a sense of false familiarity like Cutter does, but rather out of a sense of earned closeness. “You’re stronger than this. Don’t let them control you.”

Minkowski continues to stare blankly at her. With no thought as to what the consequences for doing so may be, Lovelace reaches to cup her face in her hands, feeling the familiar structure of her cheeks and jawline beneath her touch. The shock bracelet gives a light warning pulse of electricity against her skin, but she ignores it.

“Please.” Lovelace’s voice breaks apart on the single word. “Fight this. If you’re the woman that I love, I _know_ you can break free from this.”

She leans forward to kiss her. From the moment their lips touch she knows that it’s a futile motion, because this mind-control that Minkowski has fallen under is not an evil curse that can be broken by the kiss of a heroic rescuer. Minkowski does not respond to her advances, neither by meeting her lips with equal passion nor by pulling away from her. Instead, kissing her feels no different from kissing a lifeless mannequin, and every foolish hope that Lovelace has clung to fades away into nothingness.

The shock bracelet sends her a fresh burst of punishment, this time foregoing the warning and administering the full power of an electric shock. The pain courses through Lovelace’s body, forcing her to pull away from Minkowski with a cry of agony. She doubles over, clenching her other hand around her wrist where the shock had originated. A hoarse whisper of “ _Fuck”_ escapes from her, and she squeezes her eyes shut against the ache that lingers after the initial effect of the shock has worn off. When she opens her eyes, Minkowski stares at her with an unchanging expression.

“You’re in pain,” she observes with the placid tone that someone might use to point out a benign change in the weather. “Mr. Cutter warned you about the shock bracelet. Why didn’t you listen to him?”

Lovelace straightens up, her breath hissing through her teeth. “Jesus,” she murmurs. “There really isn’t any of you left in there, huh?”

Tiny stress fractures weave their way through the walls that she has placed around her most vulnerable emotions: fear, loneliness, despair. A raw ache spreads throughout her chest, and the weight of this new nightmare creates the final crack that brings those metaphorical walls tumbling down. She wants to scream out every ounce of those vulnerable emotions, but the sound does not come. Instead, she settles for grabbing the mug that Cutter has left on the table and hurling it against the wall. The ceramic form of the mug shatters upon impact, and the chai latte that it had once contained stains the previously spotless walls and floor.

Minkowski does not flinch at the sound of the mug against the wall. “Would you prefer something else to drink, Captain?” she asks, as if Lovelace’s destruction of the mug has been a personal vendetta against its contents rather than her current circumstances.

“No,” replies Lovelace, standing over the mug’s shattered remains. “No, I don’t want anything else to drink.” _I want the real you back_ , she wants to say, but it’s a useless request. The real Renée Minkowski is long gone, and all that remains is what Cutter and Pryce have turned her into. “Just… Just leave me alone.”

“Yes, Captain,” Minkowski says in a perfect model of compliance, and when Lovelace looks into her eyes one last time before turning away from her, she sees nothing but the emptiness of both of their hearts.


End file.
